What is your response if a friend tells you that they like ‘Art’? Going by my experience, that statement often receives a shrug of the shoulders and a remark about not really ’getting’ paintings and therefore having no interest in looking at them. I think there’s also an underlying opinion that art is for clever people, or very rich people who are able to collect it. I have to say that I totally disagree with this opinion. Art is everywhere, and a visit to an art gallery can be just as pleasing as a ramble in the countryside, a night out at the theatre or enjoying yourself at a music concert.
I can remember telling a friend, a well educated and intelligent woman, how much I had loved visiting the Matisse Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern a few years ago, and was very shocked by her reply which was that she would never go to see something like that because she can never see what she is told she should be able to see in the paintings. For whatever reason, she truly suspected that if she didn’t understand or agree with the ’proper’ meaning of the paintings then there was no point in her looking at it.
This amazed me! My belief is that art is totally subjective. A lot of the time, the artists themselves have deliberately not clarified what the image is supposed to depict, and the description of the item will have been dreamt up by an art expert or critic, who believes that their knowledge of the artist gives them a more valid opinion than anyone else’s. How egotistical! And in any case, no two people will even see the painting in totally the same way – in a scientific sense. You could suffer with colour blindness, or have a eyesight problem which needs treatment. You could go and view the same painting with a new pair of glasses or having had Laser eye surgery and would not see the same as what you had seen before – even if you are only seeing it more clearly.
Unfortunately, because a lot of people still seem to treat art as something a bit stuffy and dull and nobody actually disputes this way of seeing art, then people like my friend will miss enjoying some amazing visual delights. I love to amble round art galleries and I’m quite certain that my understanding of many paintings in no way corresponds with those of the ‘experts’, but that doesn’t in any way spoil my enjoyment of the pictures I am looking at. I don’t generally read the notation next to the picture telling me what I am expected to see, but instead I permit my own imagination to decide what what I’m seeing. And if I love of a painting then it’s because I actually do like it, and not because someone I’ve never met is telling me that it’s supposedly the artist’s finest work and that I should like it.
There isn’t really a specific style of art that I prefer – my favourite paintings are all quite different, although I’m not a huge fan of the late medieval age when most artwork was religious by necessity and was usually displayed in a religious location. And of course paintings with biblical themes don’t leave much room for individual interpretation anyway.
A visit to Tate Modern gives a very different perspective from a visit to the National Gallery or Tate Britain, but there are some really incredible pieces of current art located there. Certain pieces of modern art do sometimes prompt the question as to what actually defines something as a piece of art. (That infamous pile of bricks always comes to mind, and really I do think that was taking things a bit too far – references to the curators needing to go and get their eyes tested or for them to have Laser eye surgery were probably reasonable!) I expect there are many ideas about exactly what defines an item as a piece of art, but my personal view is that a piece of art is an image or shape made by someone, which other people find it pleasing to look at. And that applies just as much to abstract modern pieces as to the paintings of the acknowledged great painters of centuries ago.
I believe that is a simple definition, but it is applicable to paintings and sculptures in exactly the same manner as it would be to a piece of music, a play, a Laser eye visual display enhancing a musical performance or a book – one person (or a number of people) devise the piece and hope that others will enjoy it. So to return to the problem my friend was having with the concept of not understanding art, she wouldn’t expect anyone to advise her how to enjoy a musical performance, a night out at the theatre, relaxing at an outdoor music extravaganza with those Laser eye beams flashing across the sky or a quiet weekend reading a book, so why can’t she enjoy art in the same manner – in her own way.
BBC | Email this | Comments